Kevin Bacon

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Biography

Kevin Bacon (born 8.7.1958) is an American actor. Amongst his best-known films are Footloose, Flatliners and Mystic River.

Childhood: Kevin Bacon is the oldest of six children. He was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by his mother, Ruth and his father Edmund. Ruth was a teacher at elementary school and Edmund was an architect.

At the age of 16, Kevin Bacon attended the Pennsylvania Governors School for the Arts, which was a state-funded five-week arts course. It was this course that ignited Bacon's passion for acting.

Career: Kevin Bacon left home at the age of 17, in order to develop his career in theatre in New York. He appeared in a production at the Circle in the Square Theatre School.

His film debut came in 1978 when he appeared in John Landis' frat-house comedy Animal House, alongside John Belushi, Donald Sutherland and Tim Matheson. Although the film has become something of a cult comedy hit, it did not lead to instant fame for Kevin Bacon as he had hoped.

Instead, he returned to theatre work (including Getting Out and Flux) as well as small TV roles, in soap operas such as Search For Tomorrow, which also featured a number of other would-be stars, such as Viggo Mortenson, Kevin Kline and Angela Bassett. Kevin Bacon also featured in The Guiding Light, an award-winning daytime TV drama.

In 1982, Kevin Bacon starred in Forty Deuce and won an Obie award for his performance. Shortly after this, he made his debut on Broadway, in Slab Boys. The show also starred Sean Penn and Val Kilmer, both of whom were relative unknowns at the time. That same year, he also starred in Barry Levinson's Diner, which co-starred Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke and Ellen Barkin. Kevin Bacon played the role of Timothy Fenwick and his performance was noted by critics and audiences alike.

Bacon's next performance would bolster his profile even further: in 1984, he starred in Footloose, opposite Lori Singer, Diane West and John Lithgow. The film was compared to The James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause and Kevin Bacon's performance earned him an appearance on the cover of People magazine.

Following the success of Footloose, Kevin Bacon struggled to shake off the on-screen image and found himself typecast. In an attempt to rebel against the typecasting, the late 1980s became something of a career slump for him. In 1988, Kevin Bacon starred in the John Hughes comedy She's Having A Baby opposite Elizabeth McGovern. The next year, he starred in another comedy, The Big Picture, which also featured Teri Hatcher and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

1990 saw Kevin Bacon starring in Tremors, a comic horror that also starred Fred Ward and Reba McEntire. That same year, he also starred in Joel Schumachers' Flatliners. This would become one of the most popular films of the 1990s, featuring an all-star cast, including Keifer Sutherland, Julia Roberts and William Baldwin. Bacon then went on to star opposite Elizabeth Perkins in He Said, She Said, in 1991.

Bacon's next major film release came when he played the role of William O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK, as part of a heavyweight cast featuring Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, John Candy, Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pesci. The quality of his work continued when he starred in A Few Good Men with Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore.

Kevin Bacon was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role opposite Meryl Streep in River Wild in 1994. He then starred with Gary Oldman and Christian Slater in Murder in the First and earned himself the 1995 Broadcast Film Critic's Association Award. He also starred in Apollo 13 that year, with Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton.

1996 saw Bacon starring in Sleepers with Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman and Brad Pitt. In 1998, Bacon played a supporting role in Wild Things (starring Nicolas Cage), of which he was also executive producer. He then went on to star in Stir of Echoes and Hollow Man (with Josh Brolin and Elisabeth Shue).

In 2004, Bacon starred in The Woodsman, another acclaimed film for him. In 2009, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in the HBO film Taking Chance.

Personal Life: Kevin Bacon married the actress Kyra Sedgewick in 1988. They have two children, Travis (b.1989) and Sosie (b.1992)

Kevin Bacon also has a band, with his brother Michael. The band is called The Bacon Brothers and they have released five albums.

Kevin Bacon took to Instagram to share news that 'Tremors' would not be coming to television.

There were plenty of people looking forward to the planned 'Tremors' reboot TV series, set to air on Syfy with Kevin Bacon taking on the lead role of Valentine "Val" McKee once more, but it's now been revealed that the show won't be moving ahead at all. Though there hasn't even been a pilot episode aired, it looks like we'll never get a chance to see the 1990 classic film turned into a TV series.

Kevin Bacon has confirmed the planned 'Tremors' TV series has been canned

Hunter Parrish, Fred Ward, Emily Tremaine and Toks Olagundoye were also amongst the cast making the new series, and it's a shame we won't get to see what they would have brought to the franchise. 'Tremors' looked to be one of the dead certs for television's future, so to see it canned before it even hit the small screen is a bit of a shock!

Promoting his new Amazon series 'I Love Dick', Bacon said that he found an experience when he went shopping in disguise "awful" because no-one recognised him.

Many celebrities complain about the lack of privacy that comes with fame, particularly about being virtually unable to walk down the street without being recognised. Not Kevin Bacon, however, who says he couldn’t imagine going back to being anonymous!

The 58 year old Hollywood legend stopped by ‘The Graham Norton Show’ this week, to film an episode of the chat show which goes out on Friday (May 5th). Speaking about the subject of fame and universal recognisability, Bacon said that he found the experience of being not stopped by fans in the street when he went shopping in disguise one time as “awful”.

Kevin Bacon at the photo call for Jill Soloway's new Amazon show, I Love Dick, based on Chris Kraus' feminist text of the same name. The show premiered in the San Francisco Film Festival held at Alamo Drafthouse New Mission - San Francisco, California, United States - Friday 14th April 2017

The third time's a charm for Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg, who previously teamed for the true life adventures Lone Survivor and Deepwater Horizon, both films that spent too much time glorifying rah-rah heroism to properly tell their stories. But this dramatic thriller, which recounts the events surrounding the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, is a startlingly visceral experience, allowing for a lot more humanity in the characters. Which actually makes them feel both more honest and more heroic.

Wahlberg plays Tommy, a street cop who feels like no one notices that he's rather good at his job. When two brothers (Alex Wolff and Themo Melikidze) explode bombs at the marathon's finish line, Tommy leaps in to help the injured. And due to his local knowledge, he also helps advise FBI investigator Richard (Kevin Bacon), who is working with the local police commissioner (John Goodman). As the frantic manhunt for the bombers extends over the following days, Tommy's wife (Michelle Monaghan) tries to get him to rest, but he pushes on. And with the whole city helping the cops, the brothers are eventually chased into the neighbourhood of beat cop Jeffrey (J.K. Simmons) for an intense showdown.

This film manages to get the balance right between gritty action and inspiring heroics. Berg mixes documentary footage in seamlessly, grounding everything in reality, and he lets the actors draw out the flaws in these real-life people. This makes them much easier to identify with, which in turn makes the action sequences that much more involving. There's a shootout in here that is perhaps one of the most outrageous ones ever put on film, even more remarkable because it's true. And while Wahlberg is the only character who gets some proper depth, he plays Tommy beautifully, bouncing off everyone else in ways that add meaning and energy to the film.

In the 1970s came the most controversial and accessible comedy ever seen. The National Lampoon was a magazine featuring some of the most socially terrifying taboos and became a groundbreaking publication in the world of American humour. Unafraid were the editors to approach subjects regarding politics, war, sex, drugs and culture, and nothing was allowed to stay censored; it was, indeed, best known for the highly outrageous cover art that ranged from parodic images of Van Gogh and Hitler to a gun threat against a dog. From pages full of laughs came a multimedia comedic world with radio shows, music and television all spawning from that one paper. The most memorable incarnations of the Lampoon were the 'Animal House', 'Class Reunion' and 'Vacation' movies which took the whole franchise to a new level of fame.

Whitey Bulger has had the FBI under his thumb for too long, and now people are starting to notice. How can a criminal mastermind responsible for every major offence in the city pass by seemingly unnoticed for an entire lifetime? It's true he landed in Alcatrez at a young age, but the older the more dangerous he becomes; a kingpin of the South Boston criminal underworld who escaped justice by informing authorities of all movements of the rival gang, the Italian Mafia, as suggested by his most useful contact and friend John Connolly. But the Irish Winter Hill Gang is growing ever more powerful, and Bulger's feelings of invincibility lead to more and more murders and destruction. It's time he was stopped, but finding him is not going to be easy.

Kevin Bacon is calling on more Hollywood actors to get naked in films, in a hilarious mock PSA made by Mashable. In the clip the 57 year old tells us its not right that more films contain nudity by females than males, saying that men in films want the chance to take their clothes off too.

Kevin Bacon wants to see more male nudity in films.

"In so many films and TV shows, we see gratuitous female nudity, and that's not OK. Well, it's OK, but it's not fair to actresses, and it's not fair to actors, because we want to be naked too,” Bacon says. “Gentlemen, it's time to free the bacon And by bacon, of course, I mean your wiener, your balls and your butt.”

Irish-American criminal mastermind Whitey Bulger was arguably one of the most dangerous men in America before his arrest in 2011 at the age of 81. He'd already spent time in Alcatrez as a much younger man, having spent a lot of time on the streets of South Boston. However, by the 70s he proved to be the FBI's best tool in controlling organised crime within the country, and he was eventually persuaded by his friend John Connolly to be their informant in all workings of the rival Italian Mafia. However, it's not safe business being both a highly respected gangster and a police informant, and while much of his activity is being largely ignored as he rises to become top of the Irish Winter Hill Gang, it seems he is gaining too many killings and dodgy dealings under his belt to go unnoticed.

Harrison and Travis are two 10-year-old boys out on an adventure in the wilderness. They reach a woodland area where they spot a Sheriff's car, seemingly abandoned with the keys still in the ignition. Unable to resist, the boys rev up the engine and decide to go on a little drive, reassuring themselves that they'll pretend to be cops if anyone catches them. However, when someone does see them, they report it to the local police who, in turn, contact the Sheriff who happens to be the owner of the stolen vehicle. He radios through to his car, to the terror of the boys, and Harrison and Travis soon discover that this is no ordinary cop by just what's hidden in the trunk. They are faced with a seriously crooked officer, who will stop at nothing to track the boys down and silence them. Their only hope is to keep driving, though the open road could prove to be their deadliest enemy.

Kevin Bacon wasn’t really looking like himself on Monday and it just took one selfie to send the Twitterverse into shock. The Footloose actor sent fans into a frenzy after he posted a pic of himself looking a lot fuller in the face and simply captioned the image, ‘Greetings from the UK!’

The GoodFellas reunite at Tribeca's closing night, while Carey Mulligan and Jack Black lead the red carpet charge in New York and Los Angeles. There's one last insane trailer for Mad Max, plus the first glimpses at Tom Hardy as the Krays, Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger and Nicole Kidman in small-town Australia...